Closing arguments on tap in Pa. voter ID hearing

Closing arguments are the only unfinished business in a Commonwealth Court hearing on Pennsylvania's new voter-identification law.

Lawyers in the case are scheduled to make their final summations Thursday morning before Judge Robert Simpson. The judge plans to issue his ruling later this month.

More than two dozen witnesses have testified during the seven-day hearing, including state elections officials, individual voters, a pollster and an expert on election fraud.

Republicans in the Legislature passed the bill earlier this year without a single Democratic vote.

Democrats contend that the law is a political scheme to suppress voting by minorities, senior citizens and others with the objective of giving GOP nominee-apparent Mitt Romney an edge over Democratic incumbent Barack Obama, who carried the state in 2008.